1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and device for estimating work skills, and a computer product that manage work skills of operators accurately and exhaustively.
2) Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, to manage a call center efficiently, tasks such as complaints and inquiries from customers are distributed among operators based on skills of the operators.
For example, in a call transfer destination automatic selecting system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-253149, if there is a plurality of operators dealing with the same kind of items in past dealing tasks, the following process is executed to select an operator to whom an inquiry call should be transferred. When the similar kind of questions are addressed again, the call is transferred to that operator whose dealing duration is the shortest, using information about keywords of question contents recorded in dealing history information and an average of the dealing duration.
To distribute the dealing tasks such as complaints and inquiries from customers based on the skills of individual operators, and from a viewpoint that operators be trained efficiently, an administrator in a call center must know detailed skills of individual operators. Therefore, the administrator in the call center conducts an examination for evaluating the processing duration and dealing accuracy of items to determine the skills of the operators.
However, in the conventional system, understanding the work skills depends on individual abilities of the administrators. Therefore, it is difficult to manage the work skills of the operators exhaustively. Particularly in large-scale call centers, where the number of operators is large and the necessary work knowledge is comprehensive, it is virtually impossible to manage the work skills of the operators exhaustively by people.
In the conventional system, it is difficult to estimate the work skills of operators accurately. That is, when an operator deals with a plurality of items (questions and troubles) in one telephone call from a customer, the administrator cannot clearly know how long the operator dealt with individual items within the call duration recorded. Therefore, the dealing duration of the individual items cannot be obtained accurately, and the work skills of the operator cannot be estimated accurately.
Even when an operator deals with one item (question and trouble) in one customer call, item processing start time and end time on a record may not always match with actually written work duration. Therefore, the dealing duration required for one item cannot be obtained accurately, and thus, the work skills of the operator cannot be estimated accurately. Specifically, work done by an operator in one dealing with a customer includes writing of dealt contents besides talking with the customer, and this writing work can be done for a plurality of items after the call ends, or the writing work can be done during a break or while other work is being done. That is, the writing work can be done freely when the operator is not busy. Therefore, the item processing start time and end time on the record do not mach with the work duration actually written. Therefore, it is difficult to obtain item processing duration accurately.